Sony has come out the gates charging hard now that they’ve shed Ericsson from their mobile arm. Their first three “pure” Sonyphones were all blazing-fast HD monsters, and they’ve now been joined by the more humble Xperia sola.

The sola tones things down with a 1GHz dual-core processor and a 3.7-inch display that runs at a resolution of 480 x 854 — instead of the 720 x 1280 found on the Xperia Ion, S, and Acro HD. The rear-facing camera has been scaled back from 12MP to 5MP and a front-facing camera of unspecified resolution is part of the package, too. On the storage front, the Xperia sola packs 8GB of internal storage and offers microSD expansion.

It does, however, offer many of the same features as the other Sony Xperia phones. NFC support is built in, as is support for Sony’s Xperia SmartTags. Sony xLOUD audio tech comes standard on the sola so you can kick out the jams without distorting their audio. And like the other models, this one’s shipping with Gingerbread installed with an upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich promised “soon after launch.”

One thing the Xperia sola offers that the others don’t is something Sony calls “floating touch.” It does exactly what you’d think, allowing touch interaction without actually touching your screen. For those concerned about getting their screens all smudgy, it’s a great feature. However, Sony only mentions floating touch as working with the sola’s web browser — so its limited usefulness may be even more limited than it sounds.

The Xperia sola is due next quarter, and it’ll hit the streets in black, white, and red. Carrier details and pricing haven’t been announced yet, but you can expect this one to command slightly less of your cash than the others in the Sony Xperia line.